Track: Promoting Human Rights

East Bay Youth Against Trafficking

 

The Berkeley Anti-Trafficking Coalition (BATC) will expand upon Not For Sale’s (NFS) education outreach program. NFS visits local high schools to give educational presentations about human trafficking, in which they challenge students to use their own skills and passions to take action in the anti-trafficking movement. The presentation includes videos, information on sex and labor trafficking, stories of survivors in the Bay Area, and examples of local action being done to combat human trafficking. BATC seeks to revamp the curriculum, increase the number of classrooms visited, build a larger team of Berkeley students through a formalized training program, and provide the necessary resources and assistance for students to start their own BATC high school chapters. A strong student network for the abolitionist cause, with the BATC as a resource for high school students, will inspire future leaders in the anti-trafficking movement.

The Recreation House

The Recreation House will be a center for the development of teenagers and orphans in Vidin, Bulgaria. Located in an accessible location near the center of the city, a previously identified facility will be developed as multi-recreational and educational facility open to teenagers throughout the city, providing them with an environment where they have a chance to pursue their dreams and be encouraged in the process. The second aspect of the Recreation House fills a different need in the community. While the teenagers are at school during the day, the plan is to bring in children from the local orphanage and provide them a place 5 days a week where they can work on their developmental skills. Those skills include playing, reading, and writing, so that by the time they are moved on to the next facility at the age of eight, they will have the basic skills everyone should have a right to.

Reach! Leadership Camp for Tibetan Girls

Reach! is a summer leadership camp for Tibetan teenage girls to empower them to become the first female graduates of high school and college in their communities. The plan is to train top Chinese university students to serve as camp counselors for teenage girls from the Tibetan plateau. In the process, they will gain exposure to Tibetan cultural education in order to bridge the deeply polarized Han Chinese and Tibetan communities. This also establishes a valuable network of leaders for Tibetan girls to have access to in the process of pursuing their education.

Maji Yaja Kwanza

Vision 2030 is Kenya’s national planning strategy for “becoming a middle-income country by 2030.” Despite economic advancements, roughly 17 million of Kenya’s 41 million people lack sufficient access to safe drinking water, and 28 million are without adequate sanitation. Maji Huja Kwanza (Water Comes First in Kiswahili) aims to bring lasting inclusiveness, representation, and opportunity to the people of the coastal province of Kenya. The project aims to bring piped water and sewage access to public primary schools in the coast, beginning in Kaloleni with Kizurini Primary and Twinkle Star Primary, serving roughly 1000 children. The goal is to improve WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) practices in the coast and enable children, particularly girls, to participate in school successfully and to avoid unnecessary illness such as cholera and typhoid. Long-term plans include a technical training program for plumbing and maintenance skills, and expansion to serve orphans’ homes, adult schools, and private homes. This will contribute to sustainable growth and the livelihood of this region.

Youth Empowerment Centers for Marginalized Mexican Communities

The Adelante youth empowerment center will work with at-risk teens from Mexico who are academically demotivated or who have few resources available to them. It will motivate and empower them, supporting young professionals to be agents of change in their communities. The summer program centers will provide teens and communities with a safe haven dedicated to the professional advancement of youth and the development of Mexican communities. The franchise method of providing these centers throughout Mexico will identify local community youth and Mexican college students to lead the center in subsequent years, while the work on the expansion of Adelante youth centers across Mexico continues.

Truth as Freedom: Promoting Human Rights and Accountability through Access to Information in Sierra Leone

 

In its current reconstruction phase, Sierra Leone has made valiant efforts to reckon with its past and develop rule-of-law, historical memory, and accountability for war crimes. However, Sierra Leone has a history of corruption and remains one of the poorest nations on earth. Today, citizens need food, healthcare, and education. But they also need to trust their government. State secrecy breeds distrust and resentment among citizens— traits that can escalate into upheaval. The government has responded to this need by establishing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). FOIA laws empower citizens to request and receive information once kept as classified; thereby breaking through walls of secrecy that once concealed state corruption and violence. Equipped with the support of the National Security Archive and extensive professional experience in transitional justice and human rights, Truth as Freedom will harness FOIA’s innovative power to engender respect for human rights in Sierra Leone. Partnering with FOIA experts in the US and the growing citizen-movement for access to information in Sierra Leone, Truth as Freedom will be motivated by two goals: 1) Test and thereby strengthen the enforcement of the new FOIA law by assisting requests filed by local citizens and 2) gather and analyze documents resulting from those requests to build a dossier of potential evidence for human rights-related litigation.

Highland Health Advocates

 

We believe all humans have the right to health and wellbeing regardless of socioeconomic status. The roots of good health must begin long before the administration of a therapeutic drug. Several socioeconomic factors including nutrition, housing, and education often determine a family’s state of health. We plan to train a group of committed undergraduates to staff a “help desk” at Highland Hospital in Oakland. Emergency room and chronic disease clinic staff will refer appropriate patients and their families to the help desk, where the volunteers will walk these clients through the process of accessing a multitude of resources. We will provide support with finding housing, employment, food access, child-care, and medical-legal advocacy, among other necessities. We are collaborating with East Bay Community Law Center and students at the UC Berkeley Boalt Law School to provide legal services. The goal of this interdisciplinary approach is to improve the health of low-income patients, enhance the patient experience, reduce emergency room utilization by high frequency patients and ultimately lower healthcare costs in outpatient clinics and the emergency department.

The Pachamama Project

The Pachamama Project strives to eradicate taboos and stigmas associated with menstruation and improve the human right to clean water and education in Bolivia. The goal of the project is to develop and disseminate information regarding menstrual hygiene management (MHM) in underserved peri-urban indigenous and migrant communities in Cochabamba, Bolivia. By fostering community and school level participation in discussions and education about water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH), and MHM, the Pachamama Project seeks to broaden understandings of the human right to water, gender equality, and basic human rights. This project, in collaboration with the NGO, Water for People, will collect information in areas overlooked by the government, facilitate community organizing, lead education initiatives, and involve local stakeholders in project decision making. By framing MHM as a human rights issue, it can tap into larger discourses of justice, equity, and gender equality instead of remaining a taboo subject with complex stigmas assigned to it.

Bay Area Resource Connection: Health Equality Through Resource Consultation and Medical-Legal Partnerships

We believe all humans have the right to health and wellbeing regardless of socioeconomic status. The roots of good health must begin long before the administration of a therapeutic drug. Several socioeconomic factors including nutrition, housing, and education often determine a family’s state of health. We plan to train a group of committed undergraduates to staff a “help desk” at Highland Hospital in Oakland. Emergency room and chronic disease clinic staff will refer appropriate patients and their families to the help desk, where the volunteers will walk these clients through the process of accessing a multitude of resources. We will provide support with finding housing, employment, food access, child-care, and medical-legal advocacy, among other necessities. We are collaborating with East Bay Community Law Center and students at the UC Berkeley Boalt Law School to provide legal services. The goal of this interdisciplinary approach is to improve the health of low-income patients, enhance the patient experience, reduce emergency room utilization by high frequency patients and ultimately lower healthcare costs in outpatient clinics and the emergency department.